Adam Howorth is the author of the new novel Fallen Feathers. He is the former communications director for Apple, and he lives in London.
Q: What inspired you to write Fallen Feathers, and how did you create your character Elizabeth?
A: Where I live inspired the story. It’s a very magical and historical area that provided the perfect backdrop for Elizabeth’s adventures. There's a beautiful stretch of river, stately homes, woods, church, and the site of an ancient priory, which provided many of the key locations you find in Fallen Feathers.
The character of Elizabeth represents the child in all of us and yet she also shows an insight and wisdom beyond her years, which was important because to those searching for her, she is no ordinary child.
Q: How did you come up with the world in which the story is set?
A: I went for a walk one evening. The moon was showing through the trees and its light was reflecting off the river. I could make out a large house beyond the far bank and thought about some of the many lives and stories that had played out in this place over the centuries.
I imagined looking out one night at all of this and wondering what would happen if you saw something out of the ordinary that led you into a magical world. Elizabeth’s age makes her curious and trusting and susceptible to the darker forces that gravitate towards her.
Q: Geordie Greig of The Independent said of the book, “Original and arresting.
There is an element of late [Kazuo] Ishiguro.” What do you think of that
comparison?
A: I was obviously extremely flattered and ashamed to say I hadn’t read him until Geordie said that! Now I have, Ishiguro is most definitely one of my favourite contemporary writers and worthy of all the accolades he’s received.
I particularly empathise with his reluctance to stick to genre or repeat himself. As I writer I feel your only constraint should be your imagination.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I was as much in the dark as the reader! We went on the journey together with me making the final call at the last minute.
Writing the story was incredibly enjoyable but undisciplined and I hope I don’t do it the same way again. I would write scenes and characters and backstories as they came to me with scant regard for continuity.
That came back to bite me painfully when I was confronted with countless sheets of A4 paper spread across our living room floor, with me on my knees holding various coloured pens trying to make sense of it all.
As a writer, it's thrilling to go wherever the creative mood takes you - and I won’t change that element to a degree - but future work will come together in a more pre-organised and structured way.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I would love to write a sequel to Fallen Feathers, so I have been playing around with some ideas for that and have already written several scenes.
Otherwise, my main focus is a historical fiction based in Scotland hundreds of years ago. It has no title as yet but is the story of an old man who wants to leave the village for a final time to climb the local mountain.
It has been his lifelong ambition and he sets out to achieve it with an orphan girl for company. Together they encounter a series of existential challenges while she takes the opportunity to learn more about his life. I hope people find it magical and thrilling as well as surprising at the end.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I think Fallen Fathers is quite a filmic story and visually rich, which was intentional as I wanted it to be vivid for the reader.
It blurs genres slightly and I was careful not to exclude younger audiences with language or ideas they’d find difficult to understand, as my hope was to create a novel that would appeal to readers of any age - one of my daughters read it when she was 9 and understood most of it. I would love to hear what readers think!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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